Welcome to Transnistria

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It’s a tiny breakaway state that idolises Lenin. Its soldiers salute the hammer and sickle and its civilians praise the Kremlin. Rory MacLean visits the last bastion of the Soviet Union

In the old nursery that now houses her office, Nina Shtanski, the Foreign
Minister of Transnistria, is telling me how her homeland, although
recognised by no country in the world, is at the threshold of an optimistic
new era. This last bastion of the old Soviet Union is, she says, tolerant,
wise, culturally rich, hospitable and hard-working, with “no such phenomena
as religious or inter-ethnic contradictions”. And, she says, it’s adapting
its Soviet politics for the modern age by utilising Facebook and Skype.

The chances are you won’t have heard of Transnistria. It is a breakaway
republic of a breakaway

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Noul Neamt monastery in Chitçani

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Noul Neamt monastery in Chitçani

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

A teenage ballroom dancer at the Soviet-era Palace of Culture in the village of Tashlyk

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

The Kamenka sanatorium

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Some of the 1,000 Transnistrians who take to the River Dniester
12 days after the Orthodox Christmas on January 7

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

The Moldavcabel factory at Bender, which has produced cables for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power facility

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Tiraspol orphanage

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Foreign Minister Nina Shtanski

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

On a wall at the Bender factory, an employee painted a copy of Day of Energy – 24 December 1918, celebrating Lenin’s plan to electrify the whole of the Soviet Union

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Under Communism, Dixieland was considered to be the music of the American proletariat, so was not banned, unlike jazz. Tiraspol’s Dixieland ‘Liberty’ band is one of Transnistria’s four state-sponsored musical acts

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

At the Bender cable factory, ‘heritage equipment’ – installed in Soviet times – produces the cable for the generators at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power station

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Builders fortifying themselves with the national drink – a vodka called ‘smirnovka’, after president Igor Smirnov

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

In Kamenka, old Soviet symbols remain more than 20 years after the end of the USSR

2014-01-25 17:42:04.14 Nick Danziger

Irina Dementieva, 28, the new director of the First Republican television Channel